


citrus peel

by arctic_lava



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: 1980s New York, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Erwin is a poet, Islamophobia, Levi is a struggling artist, Levi is lebanese, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Transphobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:08:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29304777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arctic_lava/pseuds/arctic_lava
Summary: Home was the basement of a brothel in Beirut, and then when his mother was doing better, an apartment in Beirut shared with an elderly man who gave him sweets and told him stories. And then home was too ephemeral to be given a name, intangible and blurry until home was very briefly the shadow of a juniper tree, in the arms of a boy just as terrified of the world as he was. And then home was no more, trampled to the ground by giants of war, and Levi was an orphan who had very little to offer but an affinity for painting and an uncle in America.For a short while, home was Delaware with Kenny, although that was more just shelter than home. And now, home is in the East Village with Hange, with rent they still struggle to pay, and the bright orange walls Levi despises, but she adores.Levi turns around abruptly to make his way back, watching the tops of buildings hash a dark black tear through the grey sky, trying to ignore that the chimneys atop them look like people poised to jump.Levi is a struggling artist. Erwin is a successful poet searching for a muse. 1980, and the world is poised for a cacophony of beauty, hatred, and disease.
Relationships: Levi/Erwin Smith
Comments: 17
Kudos: 38





	1. 1.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home was the basement of a brothel in Beirut, and then when his mother was doing better, an apartment in Beirut shared with an elderly man who gave him sweets and told him stories. And then home was too ephemeral to be given a name, intangible and blurry until home was very briefly the shadow of a juniper tree, in the arms of a boy just as terrified of the world as he was. And then home was no more, trampled to the ground by giants of war, and Levi was an orphan who had very little to offer but an affinity for painting and an uncle in America. 
> 
> For a short while, home was Delaware with Kenny, although that was more just shelter than home. And now, home is in the East Village with Hange, with rent they still struggle to pay, and the bright orange walls Levi despises, but she adores. 
> 
> Levi turns around abruptly to make his way back, watching the tops of buildings hash a dark black tear through the grey sky, trying to ignore that the chimneys atop them look like people poised to jump.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see end notes for translations, warnings, explanations etc.

_Years later Levi would wonder if the whole debacle had even been worth it, or if it was better to have had what they had even if things concluded the way they did. Now, that part of his life exists only in the traces of dirt lingering in the soles of his shoes and the half empty jar of coffee that he can’t bring himself to throw away – despite himself always preferring tea and rarely having any visitors these days. It could never have existed, like acid burning gleaming splotches into the film reel of his life. Or maybe everything after was exactly that – just the after, and everything post 1982 was merely some irrelevant, intangible limbo that he tolerated only because dying now seemed too selfish – too disrespectful in the face of all that had happened._

_They had met in a gallery in Williamsburg owned by too rich men living off of too much of their fathers’ money, with the kind of artistry that showed more in the clothes they wore than in what their hands could create. Exactly the kind of arrogant pricks Levi tended to despise, but Hange’s work had been gaining notice at that point, and she was a good enough friend for him to waste a few hours of his time drinking free wine and praying that one day he’d be in the same place as her._

_The memory seems too rose-tinted for him to be sure he remembered correctly, but the exhibition had consisted of a dozen chairs in various states of disrepair, charred by a blowtorch that Levi had begged her not to buy for the sake of her safety, whole legs and armrests splintered and snapped; the last chair in the row existed of barely more than a pile of blackened ash, and the brassy screws that must have once held the chair together. Hange had told him it was a metaphor for intergenerational trauma, but as her passionate ranting was seldom brief, he had tuned out much of her explanation, leaving him where he was now:_ staring in slight bewilderment and hoping that he’d get the message if he just looked long enough.

Hange herself is dressed in a bizarre fusion of a what might have been half a tuxedo before it was torn to shreds, and a Victorian style dress complete with a bustle and corset; she’s chatting rowdily with a group of three daintily-styled women – who are likely trying not to stare in shock at the swirls of purple paint she has striped all over her face (last week it had been teal). One of the things Levi admired most about Hange was that she wasn’t desperately trying to look like a woman – she just _was_ a woman – a woman who dressed rather like a pirate or a cast member in a Shakespeare play most of the time. 

Levi, like most other attendees present, is traipsing around the room in slow circles. Unlike the rest, Levi doesn’t have the benefit of stopping to say hello to friends from art school, or gallery owners already obsessed with their work, or curators with pockets over-flowing with cash, desperate to throw it away at whatever New York has declared hottest in the last twenty-four hours, and he supposes this day _its Hange_. So instead, Levi comes to a standstill – staring at the seventh chair in Hange’s illusive row: this one split entirely down the middle vertically with a dark scorched edge, as if some metaphysical knight brandishing a burning sword had taken a clean sweep straight through the centre. 

Levi had been halfway through lighting a cigarette – anxious that even the faint hiss of the lighter might draw attention to his glaringly obvious reclusivity, when a cough to his right draws him out of his self-conscious musings. 

“Any guesses?”

Beside him is a tall, blond stranger in a brown tweed suit that marks him as exactly the kind of privileged asshole he resents – Levi was apparently encountering a lot of those this evening. Still, even he can admit that this privileged asshole is gorgeous – possessing a perfected type of beauty that has his hand’s itching to go home to his oil paints, and fleetingly wishing he had brought a camera so he could capture the man’s features in the buttery glow of the gallery lights instead of greedily trying to commit his form to memory – forgotten cigarette remaining unlit – dangling precariously on the bottom lip of his half-gaping mouth. 

Levi tries to briefly recall his conversation with Hange in the hopes of saying something profound and impressive, but instead finds himself muttering a fraudulently nonchalant ‘No idea,’ whilst fumbling again with his lighter. 

The stranger has crossed his arms over his chest, looking far too much like a cartoon of a tourist in a gallery brochure, his left eyebrow comically raised in a look of confusion that somehow still manages to convey an affection for Hange’s work.

Levi finds himself wobbling on a teetering seesaw of both hungrily wanting to impress the man in all his beige-toned beauty, and also wanting to despise him for the wealth he so obviously possesses.

“Hange said something about trauma,” Levi’s lips trip over the unfamiliar syllables, mouth still unsure how to utter noises the same crisp way native-born English speakers seem to find so effortless. 

“You’re a friend of Hange’s too?” Tall-blond-stranger asks, and Levi finds himself even more dumbfounded at the idea someone so very well-put together could ever want to entertain the company of somebody as chaotic as Hange.

Levi nods.

“You too?”

“Yes, we went to college together. Before she decided to abandon science in favour of the world of sculpture though, of course.”

Hange has told Levi enough about her college days for him to grimly imagine a short-haired, makeup-less, miserable Hange wasting despairing hours and boundless talent pouring over pages of numbers. The possibility that she may not have left it makes him feel slightly sick. Still, the stranger hasn’t called Hange a ‘he’ as most people from her past seem too, so Levi assumes he doesn’t need to defend her in front of him. 

“Oh. And what do you do?” Levi asks.

The stranger smiles at him, cheeks reddening into a shade of pink that reminds Levi of the rose halva he would see sold at stalls back home as a child, the kind he would glance at longingly but knowing he had no money in his pockets to spare on sweets. The man uncrosses his arms to tuck his right hand into the pocket of his probably ridiculously-expensive coat. 

“I’m a writer. A poet, specifically.”

Levi scoffs. 

“Just as pretentious as I had expected.”

The stranger seems to find that funny, which is a relief to Levi who had momentarily feared his particular brand of brusque, stand-offish sarcasm would lead to an argument in the middle of Hange’s career-defining exhibit. 

“Pretentious? And what do you do then?”

Levi pauses to tap his cigarette into an ashtray at the table behind him, so littered with empty champagne glasses he wonders how the entire room isn’t knocked out drunk. 

“I’m a painter.”

Just like Levi had, the man scoffs. 

“And I’m the pretentious one? You going to tell me your name, _Picasso?_ ”

Levi shuffles on the spot, pulling his jacket a little tighter around himself.

“Levi.”

Levi knows he should have probably asked for the stranger’s name in return, but the oddity of someone showing interest in him has thrown him off of his usual practiced social politeness. 

“Erwin Smith,” He moves slightly forward as if considering a handshake but thinking better of it. 

“Painted anything I might know?”

Levi almost laughs at the idea, bitterness strong in both his voice and in his expression.

“Last time I checked galleries weren’t too keen on giving away spots to immigrant queers.”

Erwin seems a little startled at his blunt admission, but Levi has been on this earth long enough to know who’s safe to tell and who isn’t. The most this man could do is insult him a little, maybe mutter ‘ _faggot’_ under his breath and walk away in disdain. 

“They gave a spot to Hange didn’t they? If she can, anyone could surely?” 

Erwin seems to be awkwardly dancing around Levi’s foreignness, probably desperate to ask where he’s from with a disapproving sneer like most people do. 

“Still,” Erwin grins at him, and Levi is wondering how he’d mix the exact shade of his blue eyes, so bright and almost artificial he could probably paint right from the tube. 

“You could be a fucking awful painter for all I know.” 

He’s side-eyeing Levi with a pleased smirk, drinking the last of his abandoned champagne in a single gulp.

“Well then Levi, it was nice to meet you.” 

The man places his empty glass amongst the others on the table behind them and turns to walk away.

Levi inhales the last of his cigarette, watching Erwin stride confidently to the trio of women Hange is still babbling away to.

The rest of the evening passes relatively uneventfully. Levi gets dragged by Hange into a couple of chats with apparently ‘important people’ but he never seems to impress them much, hardly the conversationalist and self-promoter she is. A few guests shoot him suspicious looks, but Levi reminds himself not to start a scene in front of the people paying Hange thousands of dollars for crumbled chairs and a variety of other oddities she’s crafted. A couple of rich racists weren’t worth the hassle of getting arrested. Still, Levi never seems to get over the bubbling urge of wanting to scream in their faces, demand to know what made him so different, _so deserving of hatred that they held their bags more tightly when he walked past._ Instead, he contents himself with the remaining champagne and two more angrily smoked cigarettes in quick succession. 

Levi takes the subway home that night reminding himself to buy new blue paint and wondering whether fleeing to New York was worth the trouble. 

\---------------------

Three evenings later, Levi is back at the apartment, surrounded by so many jars of paint water, brushes, and turpentine that he looks as if he were being enshrined by hundreds of candles in a temple.

His most recent commission is a portrait so mind-numbingly dull that he begrudges wasting the paint. But portraits of rich, ‘old-money’, white families were what paid the bills these days. Levi finishes applying a few strokes of terracotta to the nose of the apparently _‘beloved Dolores’_ before standing up, wary of the many tripping hazards before him. 

Levi begins the nightly ritual of tidying away his tools, pouring mugs of bubbly grey paint water down the sink; cleaning his brushes with the tender dedication a soldier might clean his boots with. The crinkled, contorted tubes of paint are capped with an air of finality. New York is still thriving well past midnight, dancing and shrieking as ever outside the glass panes of his window, but for today at least, Levi is finished. If the prickly woman who commissioned the piece didn’t like it, she could keep her money.

When Levi had initially moved in with Hange, it had been with an insistence that this would be the start of his success, as if lugging a few beaten suitcases into a tiny apartment had been the definite beginning of his destined career. When she was alive at least – and that feels now like a very long time ago – his mother had talked of America as if it was a utopia of creativity and freedom. A few years in and Levi has yet to experience much more than poverty and rejection.

Still, despite the certain draw-backs, New York has still retained its mysticism. Even walking down damp pavements of litter, Levi still feels a sense of liberation he hadn’t known back home. Levi used to look at the dark sky, pin pricked with stars and feel that any moment, it might come crashing down upon him like a collapsed ceiling. Here, despite the stars being blanketed away by the pollution and never-ending lights, the sky seems to go on forever, _up and up and up_ until Levi begins to understand why so many people are convinced a God must have created it. 

Hange should be back soon, if she’s not hooking up with her most recent obsession – an apparently stunning PhD student from Europe named Moblit that Levi has yet to meet, and whom Hange claimed to be undyingly in love with. Still, it tended to be a different boy each time Levi asked, so he held out little hope that this so-called Moblit would prove to be some sort of soulmate. 

True to his expectations, Hange falls through the door a few minutes later as Levi is boiling water for tea, a blur of glitter and bright colour and as always (to his considerable dismay) _noise._

“Levi, he’s the one.” 

She’s clearly drunk, but Levi can’t begrudge her that, and her hair has fallen out of the carefully twisted style he watched her do before she left, leaving ribbons of brown trickling down her back like tree branches. 

Levi takes the pan of boiled water off of the stove, pulling two mugs from the cupboard for them both as she collapses onto the couch.

“That’s exactly what you said about – fuck I can’t even remember what he was called? Paul?”

Hange is pulling the false eyelashes from her eyes, a ritual of femininity he could never comprehend, the small strips of hair looking too eerily like spiders.

“He stood me up for that waitress I told you about. And his name was Phillip.”

She’s giggling, her lithe arms propping up her head as she watches Levi, seemingly amused. Any other night, he would have sketched her in trailing lines of charcoal whilst they gossiped about her most recent love interests, whom of their peers was doing successful in the art scene, and their most recent preoccupation: trying to figure out whether the elderly woman who lived below them had killed her aggressive ginger cat. 

“Anyways. Levi.” She’s looking smug, the same frenetic look in her eyes she gets when she has a sudden burst of creativity to build some bizarre contraption.

Placing their tea on the table, Levi sits in the chair opposite her – a rickety wooden thing they’d stolen from outside a closed-down warehouse. 

“A little birdy told me-” she pauses to reposition the strap of her dress. 

“That a certain blond author had taken an interest in you last Friday.” 

She’s peering at him over the rim of her mug, clearly pleased with herself. 

Levi laughs dryly. 

“I called him pretentious and he told me I was probably a shit painter. Don’t know who’s telling you he was ‘interested’”. 

In truth, Hange’s admission has sparked a bizarre nervousness in him; it’s a fizzing excitement too close to hope, too close to the way he felt when he had his first kiss aged fifteen with a boy named Sarikh in the shade of a juniper tree, before getting caught by a stall-owner and beaten over the head. The two of them never spoke again, and Levi wonders what he’s doing now, hundreds and hundreds of miles away from where he is now. _Probably married to a woman more graceful than Levi could ever hope to be, with three kids and a reputation unscathed by the incident. Or maybe he’s dead now, like so many others Levi knew._

“Well, Petra says she saw you both talking, and you don’t talk to anyone Levi – no don’t argue with me, you know I’m right.”

Levi takes a sip of his own tea – not cooled enough, leaving his tongue throbbing in quiet, uncomfortable pain.

“Talking is talking. That’s all it was.”

Clearly disappointed with his answer, she lets out a soft tut, pulling off her shoes – six-inch heels in a violent shade of purple that plague him with images of her tripping over. 

“Well, the only reason I mentioned it – _God these shoes fucking hurt-_ ” 

Levi can see raw blisters blemishing her ankles, so deep that a trail of blood has dribbled down to her heels. With a wince, she throws the shoes to the ground, an action that would have pissed Levi off had she been sober, but in her tipsy bliss is oddly endearing. 

“Erwin invited us both to dinner. He’s only been back in New York a few months, and _don’t tell me you won’t go because I will drag your scrawny ass there myself._ ”

“We spoke for less than thirty seconds Hange. Absolutely not.” 

“ _You’re coming Levi._ Because he said I could bring Moblit and you need to meet him.”

Levi collects their now empty mugs, standing to take them to the sink. 

“No. _Rūh ballet el-bahr._ ”

Hange slouches into a laying position on the couch, giggling drunkenly again.

“I’m going to assume that was Arabic for _‘Yes Hange, I will absolutely come with you to meet your soulmate Moblit, and so that I also have a chance of getting laid at least once in the next decade, thank you so much for asking.’_ ”

Her eyes are drooping shut, although she’s still sniggering to herself softly.

Levi pulls the blanket draped on the back of the couch over her almost-slumbering form. 

“Goodnight, Hange.”

“ _Tu-Tus bi el-_ ” Levi bursts into laughter, her attempts at Arabic devastating at best.

“Don’t even bother trying Hange.” He’s still laughing as he tucks her discarded shoes beside their door where they should be, listening to her dozing breaths with a fond smile. 

“ _Tusbih ealaa hkayr._ Dumbass.” 

Despite his prior insistence that the day was over, Levi shrugs on his coat and leaves the apartment, tiptoeing in an attempt not to wake Hange. He feels sick with happiness, and with a restless need for fresh air. That same happiness that tugs his mouth into a smile, _that makes him laugh at parties with Hange and Petra and Eld and whoever Hange was dating at the time,_ makes him feel nauseous with the terror that it could all be taken away from him in seconds. Levi tries to shrug the fleeting fear away, but his brain is humming as ever with the rattling salvo of gunfire and yelling, and _clouds of misty sand kicked up by desperate running feet, torn flags and blood – blood in puddles so deep you could drown in it._

Levi walks a few blocks, hands tucked into his pockets, embracing the cold chill of the wind knowing it means he has escaped – he was one of the few that made it out alive. Although making it out means he can never go back. What was once home is now thousands of miles away, being crumbled to pieces like one of Hange’s chairs at the gallery. 

Home was the basement of a brothel in Beirut, and then when his mother was doing better, an apartment in Beirut shared with an elderly man who gave him sweets and told him stories. And then home was too ephemeral to be given a name, intangible and blurry until home was very briefly the shadow of a juniper tree, in the arms of a boy just as terrified of the world as he was. And then home was no more, trampled to the ground by giants of war, and Levi was an orphan who had very little to offer but an affinity for painting and an uncle in America. 

For a short while, home was Delaware with Kenny, although that was more just shelter than home. And now, home is in the East Village with Hange, with rent they still struggle to pay, and the bright orange walls Levi despises, but she adores. 

Levi turns around abruptly to make his way back, watching the tops of buildings hash a dark black tear through the grey sky, trying to ignore that the chimneys atop them look like people poised to jump.

\---------------------

“ _Levi you are not going dressed like that._ ”

Levi fails to see what is so wrong with the ensemble: it’s essentially the same black dress-pants and linen shirt he wears almost every day, although _he_ had thought he’d made an outgoing decision by wearing a shirt in a faint, dusky lilac rather than the usual white. 

“You know I hate to adhere to stereotypes, but for a gay man you have about as much fashion sense as Mrs Knight downstairs. It’s the fucking 80s Levi, not the 1800s.”

Hange herself is dressed as ever in her usual style of chaos – today a military surplus jacket over a dress made from curtains they’d picked up at a flea market whilst she was looking for copper pipes to sculpt with. Levi had commented snidely that the brash leopard print pattern probably meant they came from a brothel, but she had just smiled and promised to wash them. 

She drags him into her bedroom, in its usual state of disarray – Hange drew the line at allowing him to tidy her room as well – pushing him to sit at the edge of her bed.

“You’re an artist Levi- a creative. And yet you dress like a fucking wax work figure at a Civil War museum!” She shouts. 

Levi scoffs at that, but Hange is already raiding her draws, picking up brushes and pots.

Before he can protest, Hange is patting something glittery onto his eyelids, one arm clenching his wrist to keep him from batting her away. 

“What the hell are you doing to me?”

“It’s eyeshadow. You have pretty eyes. If you stay still, I can do eyeliner as well, and you’ll look like the beautiful twink you were always destined to be.” She chuckles with an intensity that makes him fear he’ll be stabbed in the eye with the brush she’s waving around.

Hange’s then pencilling his eyes, the movements foreign and discomforting, making him squirm and blink rapidly. 

“There, done. Beautiful. Wipe it off if you really hate it.”

Levi stares into the mirror of her dressing table, unnerved by his appearance. The lines of black around his eyes remind him of the kohl many would wear during Eid celebrations back home – the elderly man back in Beirut had explained the tradition, but Levi had never cared much for religion – an issue that got him into trouble at school more times than he cares to remember.

He doesn’t often feel beautiful, but if the world is going to offer him a few moments like this, he thinks he can probably be content. Levi sees strength in the warmth of his skin, and in the grey of his eyes, and though he’d never admit it to Hange, he thinks _yeah, sort of beautiful._

The stroll to Erwin’s apartment is relatively short compared to the walks the two of them often have to take for lack of cab money, and Levi revels in Hange’s confidence, the way she ignores passer-by’s staring, the grin on her painted face never faltering. _Years later Levi would understand the confidence was fraudulent, a façade to keep her safe from those who wished her harm. She had seen other girls like herself murdered, left for dead enshrouded in hotel bed sheets._ But for now, the breeze around them is warm, the evening is young, and they are two free souls untouched by the hatred of the world around them. 

Reaching SoHo within half an hour, Levi looks up at the red-bricked apartment with its deep green door and realises that Erwin was probably even richer than Levi had initially expected.

Hange knocks at the door, cheerful as ever in spite of Levi’s obvious anxiety. 

He’s wearing a cream sweater this time. _Levi remembers it, the way the way the late evening sun had rippled his blue eyes into the swirling tones of a Monet painting, the citrusy warmth of the sun displaying the tiny spattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose, like a spray of red poppies across an almost empty field._

“Come in, let me grab both your coats.” He’s smiling with a warmth that should make Levi nervous, _had it been anyone else, Levi would have questioned their intentions._ When Erwin smiles, Levi just feels safe, and that is perhaps more terrifying than the awkward dinner conversation Levi had anticipated.

Entering the hallway, Levi can hear maybe three or four other people already deep in discussion, and reconsiders whether letting Hange dragging him here was a good idea. He feels stupid in the makeup Hange had painted onto him; insecure in his outfit that likely cost a mere fraction of the socks Erwin’s wearing. 

Erwin’s hanging up both their jackets, before leading them into doorway. He pauses, lets Hange bound a few steps ahead of them, and looks down at Levi.

“You look lovely by the way.”

And that is all he says, before pointing to two empty seats and excusing himself to the kitchen. 

The various others seem to be either friends of Erwin, or acquaintances of Hange that she managed to drag along with her – Petra apparently falling into the overlap. New York, for all its greatness and immensity, seems to Levi to be a never-ending Venn diagram of people you know, and the others that _they know._ Levi always seems to be dotted somewhere on the outskirts.

Introductions are brief, and Levi busies himself by pouring himself a glass of water whilst a towering man named Mike congratulates Hange on a recent review – some simpering account of a new sculpture she sold recently that gushes with praise and yet somehow still manages to be wildly tone-deaf and offensive. Levi takes nervous sips, noticing the faded red wine stain on the cuff of his shirt sleeve, and wishing he had never agreed to come along.

Moblit – considering that Levi had genuinely doubted his existence in the early days of Hange’s pining – materialises from the neighbouring kitchen as a gangly, blushing man that looks at Hange with such a sincere sense of awe Levi feels guilty for ever joking that he was simply a passing phase. Moblit looks at Hange the same way Levi looked at the first Rembrandt painting he ever saw – with a damp-eyed ferocity that the world would be what he made of it, not what he was told it had to be. And yet watching their gentle touches, the fragile way Moblit wraps his hand around Hange’s waist, Levi still feels the trickling sensation of fear down his spine: the terror of being caught, of being accused or attacked. Levi takes slow breaths and reminds himself that they’re behind closed doors, behind walls that keep the hostility at bay, and that if anyone was planning on doing something, they would have done it the moment he stepped in with makeup on. But the cacophony of terror continues, and Levi sits in a room of other queer people, somehow unable to stop worrying that any moment someone might stand up and strike Hange across the face, or throw a fist into the face of Moblit: Moblit who looks at Hange with such an innocent devotion it hurts to even think there’s people out there who consider their very existence a stain upon the clean, virginal white bedsheets that America sleeps upon. 

“Apologies for the wait – I must admit, for someone who invited you all for dinner, I’m an appalling cook.” 

Erwin is carrying three plates at once, laden with some sort of pasta dish. Levi, sat in the far-right corner of the table, is the last to be served. 

Levi doesn’t even need to look up from his own plate to know Hange is staring at the specks of pork on the plate, wondering if she should say something, or whether Levi will. 

Levi knows he hasn’t prayed in almost a decade. He drinks way too much alcohol. He knows he has probably sinned more than anyone else in the room, has broken so many rules that his mother - so devoted in spite of his own staunch atheism - would probably turn in her grave. And yet, there are still some things Levi clings to, as if they somehow bring him closer to home: as if letting them go would mean he could never have them back. Levi fasts every Ramadan in devotion to a God he doesn’t even believe in. He wonders if it’s for his mother, or if it’s because deep down, he thinks maybe if he tries hard enough, that the believing part might follow suit. 

“Erwin?” Hange has clearly seen the paled look of resignation on his face and chosen to speak up.

“Levi can’t eat pork.”

Any other time, Levi would hate that someone is speaking on his behalf. The chatter has gone quiet, the scraping of cutlery against crockery like nails upon a chalkboard.

“Shit, Levi, I’m so sorry - I should have asked Hange about allergies,” Erwin is staring at him with such a genuine look of guilt that Levi feels bad for simply being at the table. 

“Thank God Nan’s vegetarian, I’ll get you a plate of what she’s having. It’s a lasagne-type thing – is that okay?” 

The blonde beside Mike grins at Levi.

“I wouldn’t if I were you – he’s as shit of a cook as he says he is.”

And then the table is laughing, Erwin is bringing him another plate, and Levi finds himself falling into the lulling rhythm of conversation. The nagging insecurity of being different, of being the _other_ dissipated by quick humour, and Erwin’s willingness to accommodate Levi without any of the rude questions he has had to deal with in the past.

The blonde beside Mike turns out to be some sort of journalist, although Levi doesn’t admit he’s never heard of the newspaper. Mike himself apparently curates paintings for a museum, a career that has Levi internally wincing that Hange will probably loudly proclaim what an incredible artist Levi is; to which he will have to admit he is little more than a struggling painter who gets by on miserable commissions, and can’t land a gallery spot because all the rich pricks that own them despise him either for his race, or his style, or more often than not a combination of the two. 

And Moblit, who is eating with his fork in his left hand whilst his other tucks a stray lock of hair behind Hange’s ear, is a PhD student, although what he actually studies seems rather nebulous to Levi – something about engineering bridges? His explanation goes on for far too long and conveys very little.

As meals finish, they all trail into the living room, a sterile place with modern furniture that seems so bizarrely juxtaposed by the immense piles of books Erwin has stacked everywhere- the only sign that anybody lives in here at all. Petra, ever the epitome of politeness, is helping Erwin hand out glasses of Negroni, the poorly cut orange peel bobbing about in his own glass like a lifeboat lost at sea. 

Levi glances at the wide balcony doors, so large he feels almost as if he was in at aquarium, and all the wandering pedestrians he can see below are schools of fishes, darting about in a variety of shimmering colours. Life always seems so performative behind glass, as if all these people didn’t really have homes to go back to, or lives of their own, but rather existed only to walk in front of Erwin’s window day in day out. 

Levi catches Erwin’s eye, gesturing to the door. 

“Do you mind if I go outside for a smoke?”

“Go ahead. I might join you, if you don’t mind?”

Levi nods with a defiance, a determination not to be intimidated by them spending time alone. 

Together they walk to the balcony, Erwin unlocking the door and gesturing for Levi to step out first. Levi can hear Hange babbling about some artist she knows named Basquiat, who she insists will be huge, although Hange says the exact same thing about himself, and Levi has little success to show for it.

“I really am sorry about dinner Levi, it was completely ignorant of me not to ask,” Erwin says, his cigarette pinched between his thumb and forefinger as if he were inspecting it. His hair has fallen slightly out of place, the gold, straw-like strands twitching in the outside breeze.

Levi tuts. 

“It’s fine,” he mutters, although it isn’t really fine. Erwin is right, he should have asked. 

“You couldn’t have known, mistakes happen. And you sorted it out, so it’s fine now.” 

Levi watches the glowing embers of his cigarette crumble downwards after he inhales, the itch in his hands slowly relieved. 

“Maybe I’d prefer not to make mistakes where you’re involved.” 

Erwin continues his smoking in silence, and Levi finds himself almost furious at the man’s speech, that somehow manages to be both brutally frank and yet illustrious. Levi feels like grabbing handfuls of his stupidly expensive sweater and demanding he explain himself: explain to Levi why he insists on speaking in odd riddles like some sort of homo-erotic Sphynx. Levi doesn’t even know if the man’s gay or not, or whether he just finds Levi an interesting person to wind up – the latter doesn’t even seem unlikely.

The seconds between them pass slowly, like sludge pooling around at their feet, restraining their movements. 

“I’m Lebanese. Half Lebanese, at least. Not sure of the other half, I don’t think he stayed long enough to mention more than his first name.”

 _Francis._ That’s all Levi knows.

“Sorry?” Erwin seems surprised, as if he forgot Levi was there at all. 

“You’ve been waiting to ask me. Pisses me off. _Where are you from? Where do you come from?_ Sometimes I say West Virginia just to irritate people.” Levi admits with a sly grin.

“I didn’t ask though. Why tell me?” Erwin has crossed his arms smugly. 

Levi scoffs. 

“You’re probably just trying to be mysterious. Make me all confused so I tell you all my secrets.”

Erwin laughs heartily, and it’s a rich sound that warms the air in Levi’s lungs, makes the dimming burn of the setting sun upon the horizon seem to glow brighter for a brief second. 

“Oh Levi, now you’ve exposed my evil plan.” Erwin pauses to tap the ash off of his dwindling cigarette. 

Levi stamps out the last of his cigarette, his worn boots looking shamefully worse-for-wear beside the sleek shine of Erwin’s polished brown Oxford’s. 

As he turns to leave, Erwin grabs his shoulder – a move that makes Levi immediately wary, poised to be hit or kicked or _told in a panic to run and not look back._

“Wait a second. Look at me.” Erwin pulls a scrap of paper and pen out of his pocket, and scribbles frantically, looking up occasionally to look at Levi like a scrutinous teacher marking a particularly annoying student’s test paper. 

Levi doesn’t know why he just obeys, letting Erwin looks at him like one might look at a Michelangelo sculpture. Levi stands before him, stiff and still, as if this balcony was his pedestal, and Erwin was carving him out of marble, chipping away at him desperate to find whatever is within. Levi doesn’t think whatever is inside him is what Erwin seems to be so desperately searching for, but still, he obeys – grey eyes staring into blue with a kind of agreement that seems to acknowledge nothing at all. 

“Sorry, thanks.” Erwin tucks the paper away, offers no explanation, and walks away back into the living room. 

Levi spends the rest of the evening in an odd kind of stupor, the kind one experiences when awakening from an intense dream with no idea what time it is or where you are. Erwin entertains the rest of the guests seemingly unaffected, joining in with Hange’s ramblings, and clearing away empty glasses. 

At the end of the evening, Hange leaves with Moblit, and Levi leaves alone, with a strange realisation that he feels for the first time in his life he has been noticed, as if noticing was something so much deeper than being seen or witnessed or looked at.

\---------------------

The next morning, Levi is skimming the newspaper when he sees it – Erwin’s face in grey tones, bold lines of huge figures, and rave reviews and insistence of his genius. Levi doesn’t know how famous he had thought Erwin had been, but it had certainly not been to this extreme- to the extremes of the New York Times caring enough about your recent divorce to print about it. Levi looks at the accompanying photo of an elegant looking brunette woman and doesn’t know if he feels resentment or jealousy. Levi can feel the remaining streaks of yesterday’s eyeliner flaking on his cheeks, and thinks that so much of his life seems to be tainted by grey; whether that be the grey of gunmetal, the grey shade of a juniper tree, or the grey smudges of Erwin’s face across newspaper pages. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiya! i'm having a few issues deciding when to use more traditional arabic, or when to use lebanese dialect so if there's anything that doesn't make sense and anybody has corrections please let me know so I can amend my mistakes! 
> 
> _Rūh ballet el-bahr_ \- a lebanese idiom that means go tile the ocean literally. it basically means you can't convince me - it would be easier to tile the whole ocean, so don't even bother
> 
>  _Tusbih ealaa hkayr_ \- goodnight
> 
> there's going to be a lot of outdated attitudes and terms used towards characters in this, just to let you know. the racism levi faces is a pretty strong theme throughout, as is homophobia and transphobia. if you're unsure if this might be triggering for you, drop me a comment so i can explain how this might develop, or where this might be present in the text. 
> 
> also, levi has a pretty tricky relationship with religion/ islam, just so you're aware of that.
> 
> i hope you enjoyed this, i have a pretty huge plot lined up that im very excited to write! please comment if you do like this, it means the world :) 
> 
> jo x


	2. 2.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Say something else then.”
> 
> _You terrify me. You make me feel simultaneously ugly and beautiful. I want to put my bare hands on your skin without noticing the ways you and I are different. I want to touch you without feeling guilty. I want to love you without burning in hell for it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw at end notes

_Pomegranates in the late autumn, their juice dripping down his chin like blood. Loquats in spring. Swollen figs in the summer, eaten before spoiled by the hot drench of rain._

\--------------------

“Don’t you think you should paint him to be somewhat more… chivalrous?”

Levi looks up from his easel at the sneering teenager before him and thinks that little could be less chivalrous than the hunched over, grey-suited Nicholas who has taken to throwing rude hand gestures Levi’s way whenever he thinks his mother isn’t looking.

His mother is presently walking around the room, arms crossed over the ruffled collar of her blouse, the rhythmic clack of her heels banging against the hardwood floor. Mrs Miller (or rather her husband, since he was the one with the enormous income) was willing to pay more than his last three commissions combined for a portrait of her grim-faced son, who would one day be heir to what Mrs Miller proudly proclaimed to be America’s most successful producer of foldable lawn chairs.

Levi stares at the brush in his hand for a few brief seconds, admiring that the splintered bristles look slightly like the awry fronds of a palm tree, turned to a hay-like gold by the heat of the sun. 

“Of course, Ma’am,” Levi replies curtly.

“Yes- well…” Mrs Miller seems to be pondering her next choice of words.

Levi watches Nicholas outside the corner of his eye, as his stone-faced neutrality morphs into a malicious scowl. Why a thirteen-year-old whose future is already safely secured by nepotism could ever have a reason to hate him, Levi is left unsure. The acne on his face – acne Levi had generously chosen to overlook when rendering his visage in a plenary sketch – reddens deeper in what might be either bubbling irritation of complete fury.

“He has to look powerful – understood?”

Levi doubts there is a painter on this continent talented enough at lying to make the brat in front of him look anything akin to powerful, but he simply nods in agreement. For all that Levi in his college days had despised the kind of photo-realistic portraiture that philistines seemed to permit, affluent families always seemed to be gagging at the opportunity to hang something on their walls that they could call hand-painted. Levi felt suddenly sickened by the notion that his art would perhaps sit captive for decades, capturing dust on the staircase to the Miller’s fourth-floor attic. It might occasionally be brought up in conversation. A family friend, or clueless guest might comment on the colours or the brushstrokes, but their praise would never exceed what the naïve, naked eye could catch in a fleeting glance. Levi seemed doomed to create art that existed only on the harsh, ravenous walls of those who couldn’t appreciate it beyond understanding how much was paid for its conception.

Nicholas shuffles around in his chair, and Levi has to bite his lip to hold back a yell. The whole session has been a nightmare, with the combined behaviour of Nicholas, and his simpering mother who has been making passive aggressive comments for the last hour. Had this been a practice sketch with Hange or Eld, Levi would have no qualms with telling them to _‘fucking sit still and stop squirming around like a fucking two-year-old in a high chair,’_ although Levi doubts Mrs Miller would be too pleased with him affording Nicholas the same treatment.

Levi busies himself with a tube of cadmium yellow, muttering a soft _“kol khara,”_ under his breath as he begins tentative work at Nicholas’ hairline. 

“Pardon?”

Levi looks up at her grimacing face and considers whether the money she’s offering him is worth the torment of being forced into a room with both her and her putrid offspring three times a week until the painting is complete.

“Oh, nothing Ma’am, I was just talking to myself – making a note of something,” Levi spouts the usual social niceties, holding back rambling insults and scathing curses to the confines of his own mind.

Mrs Miller doesn’t seem particularly pleased by his response; the bright coral of her lipstick smeared over her mouth presses itself into a narrow line, as if she had no mouth at all but a thin streak of orange, like a child’s drawing of a smiley face.

“I thought you might not have understood me.”

Levi grits his teeth and counts to ten in his head: slow beats to calm himself down. First in Arabic, then English, and then just because he still thinks he’s at risk of punching a hole through his canvas – in Spanish as well, although he doesn’t know how to make it past four.

“With all due respect Mrs Miller, I’ve been speaking English with you since we first met,” Levi stares at a streak of sage green splattered against the inside of his left wrist, hoping that whatever comes out of her mouth next is an apology for her blatant lack of tact.

Levi brushes the dried flakes of paint from his brown slacks before standing from his stool to stare at her, arms crossed just as her own had been moments earlier. 

“Well, forgive me, but it’s hard to tell with that accent of yours Levi, dear.” She stares at him with a sickly, insipid smile, so sincere that Levi can’t distinguish if it is in maliciousness, or a complete ignorance of her own behaviour. 

Nicholas, the god-forsaken tyrant that he is, follows suit, coming to a pause beside his mother. _Norman Rockwell be damned. If anything could illustrate American culture in one perfect image, it was the both of them stood together against the harsh backdrop of Mrs Miller’s mauve wall paint, staring down at him: The immigrant. The outsider._

“I mean, you never told us where you’re actually from did you? I’m doing a school project on third-world countries - you should tell me,” Nicholas digs, clearly aware of the insinuation behind his words, the scathing hint digging away at Levi like a shovel into dirt, like one might dig away the earth for a grave. 

Levi presses the heel of his hands into his eyeballs, tipping his head back in irritation and breathing deeply, pivoting to sit back down at his stool and get the damned session over. 

“Go sit back down sweetheart, he’s Columbian, aren’t you Levi?”

“No Ma’am.” Levi forces out, seriously questioning the woman’s intelligence. 

“Did you come here legally?” Nicholas sneers.

_Later that afternoon Levi would regret that his drastic actions had lost him a four-figure sum, but in the heat of the moment, they had felt like an entirely appropriate response, and even at a loss of a thousand dollars, Levi still stands by the fact that they deserved it._

“I’m from Lebanon,” Levi growls, swiftly packing his oil paints away into his bag, and folding up his easel with a methodical preciseness. _Fuck this. Fuck Mrs Miller and her son, and fuck their stupid rich house, and their tacky expensive furniture and their glorified rat of a dog that has been yapping the whole afternoon._

“Columbia? That’s not even the right continent. Have you never taken a geography class in your life?” Levi asks sharply, shrugging on his coat. He collects his things, and strides down the hallway – the shrieking outrage of Mrs Miller echoing behind him like a theatrical imitation of the howling haunting of a ghost.

Levi loops his scarf around his neck, stepping out onto the porch and turning back to face Mrs Miller’s look of shrill indignation and outrage: the craters and wrinkles of her face momentarily pulled taut in her hysteria.

“Apologies Mrs Miller, on second thoughts, I don’t think that my particular style is well-suited to what you are looking for. I advise finding a painter more experienced in painting _ibn el sharmouta_ such as your son Nicholas.”

Levi stomps down the sidewalk, aware that with his small frame, he probably looks somewhat like a toddler throwing a tantrum, all the stuff he’s carrying dwarfing him even further. He spits out a colourful variety of curse words, muttering under his breath against Mrs Miller and her son, and the hefty weight of his easel, and the paint he’s now wasted, and _fucking America and all the people in it with their lack of manners, and the shoes he’s wearing that give him blisters, and the landlord he hates, and the shitty breakfast he ate this morning_ , all culminating in an intense rage that makes his palms sweaty and his angry footsteps fall even faster.

\---------------------

Levi is sent spinning into the wall to his left by someone’s shoulder.

“Hey, watch it asshole!” He yells.

With the day he’s having, Levi turns around and prepares himself to swing a fist into the stranger if he gives him the smallest excuse. Levi feels like he is perhaps one petty mistake away from decapitating the next person who irritates him.

“Oh, forgive me – Levi! Are you alright?”

Erwin stands before him, concern gleaming in the blue of his eyes. He reaches for Levi’s shoulders to steady him, brushing dirt from the shoulder of his jacket that the wall must have soiled him with.

In truth, Levi feels like he’s going to break down crying right in the middle of the street. The fiasco with Mrs Miller had simply been the tip of the iceberg. 

Thursday, Kenny had called him from jail – what was maybe the sixth time he had done so in the five years that Levi had known him. _Possession and aggravated assault_ , one of Kenny’s lesser crimes by his own perverted moral compass. Kenny, for all that heroin addiction tended to leave him mostly static and immobile, drugged up to his eyeballs on the living room floor for most of the time Levi had lived with him, could be easily moved to violence and cruelty – usually inspired by money, or as the situation stood: a lack of it. 

Friday, Hange had gotten attacked on the street walking home by a group of tourists. Levi spent the evening wiping blood from her face, scrubbing the stains out of her blouse at the sink at 3am until the skin on his fingertips was worn as pink as the water, as if with the stains cleaned away - the evidence gone - they could both pretend it had never happened. Hange put on a brave face, grinning and joking about the violet bruise that had blossomed across her right cheekbone, but Levi saw her staring at herself in the mirror the next morning, eyes glistening with tears, mouth trembling with something he saw very rarely on her – _terror_.

Moblit now insisted on walking Hange back from her studio whenever she stayed late, and although Levi doubted Moblit with his slim, skinny frame would be particularly useful in a fistfight, the knowledge helped him sleep a little better at night. 

“Jesus, Levi, you look like you’re going to collapse.” 

Erwin looks around, maybe searching for a bench to sit them both onto.

Levi wishes he would collapse: fall into the ground, sink lower and lower. Fall through the cement beneath him, down the sewers, and even lower still. Until he’s buried deep in dirt and soil, barely a person anymore. Just bones simmering away in the heat of the earth’s core. Safe, tucked into the world’s ribcage, nestled beside its heart – free from the fear that seems so rampant lately his skull aches.

Erwin is pulling them into a café a few strides ahead of them, pushing Levi into a table by the window much like a mother might force her child into bed.

“Wait here, I’ll get you a glass of water. Do you want coffee or something? Maybe you should eat something – do you feel dizzy?”

Levi wonders if Erwin knows he’s rambling, _fussing about him_. Levi remembers his mother, and how she had held him close once when he was seven and had taken a particularly bad fall. The skin of his knee had been scraped away almost entirely, and Levi had screamed and screamed, his head tucked into her shoulder – too afraid to look at the wound, and the shiny gleam of raw, uncovered skin. Levi thinks of her soft perfume, the way the cotton of her hijab had brushed against his forehead in the breeze of the wind – covering them booth, cocooning him safe from the world.

“Tea please.” Erwin nods and walks to the counter. He’s dressed more formal than Levi’s seen him before, deep brown suit and a paisley tie that Levi cringes at, even in his state of relative meltdown. The street outside the window is busy – busier than Levi would hope for considering he very nearly started sobbing on the sidewalk. 

_So much for grocery shopping._

Carrying a tray, Erwin walks back to the table and sits in front of him, the chair screeching loudly as he pulls it out. 

“Tea. And there’s some water. And I – uh – got you a muffin. Thought you could probably do with something sugary.” Erwin says, pushing the tray towards him, and grabbing a mug of what must be his own drink. 

Levi laughs, running a hand through his hair nervously.

“You’re spoiling me. Sorry about this. I’m fine really.” Levi takes a bite from the muffin anyways. It tastes citrusy, and there’s streaks of lemon zest dotted throughout the doughy centre. 

“Levi, without sounding insulting, you look terrible.” Erwin smiles at him warmly, although his eyebrows are still slightly furrowed with worry. 

Levi stares at the floor, the once grey tiles tarnished into a murky sludge colour, permanently dyed by the constant influx of footsteps, of muddied shoes dirtied by miles and miles of walking, the New York dust clinging to them like a fine sweat.

“Bad week,” Levi responds, sipping at his water slowly and keeping his gaze on the ground.

“Want to talk about it?” 

Levi shakes his head.

“How come you’re all dressed up?”

“I had an interview with my editor, just down the street.” Erwin points out of the window to a tall, towering building that glistens in the sunlight like a body of water.

“I have a collection coming out soon – she needed to consult me regarding typography. Completely pedantic nonsense if you ask me. I’ve never known a woman who cared so passionately about fonts.” 

Levi feels a bit bitter that he’s just lost a commission, whilst Erwin is out here with a publishing deal that no doubt amounts to more money than he’ll ever see in his lifetime, but he pushes it away.

“Am I ever going to get to read some of these poems?” Levi gulps down the last of his water, watching the glint of his contorted reflection against the curved rim of the glass. 

“Are you ever going to show me one of your paintings?”

Erwin smirks at him. Levi’s head hurts. His brain feels like a bruised peach, as if it had been poked and prodded.

_Pomegranates in the late autumn, their juice dripping down his chin like blood. Loquats in spring. Swollen figs in the summer, eaten before spoiled by the hot drench of rain._

“I’m not shy. You can see my paintings if you really want.”

Levi watches the quirk of Erwin’s lips – _the ball in his court_. Although in truth, Levi finds the prospect of showing his work to anybody nerve-wracking, let alone Erwin who seems to have such a bizarre grip upon him, despite the tentative and brief time they’ve known each other.

“I’ll hold you to that.” Erwin points his finger at Levi, before reaching down to his feet to open a bag Levi hadn’t even noticed he’d been carrying.

“Here.”

He hands Levi a wad of paper maybe an inch thick, held together with treasury tags, the electric blue string trailing like loose veins.

“This is one of the previous drafts. It hardly compares to the current manuscript, but if you want that you’ll have to wait.”

Levi holds the paper in his hands, running a finger over the inky gloss of the title. _‘Utrecht’_.

“Maybe I’m impatient.” Levi glances up at him, revels in the taken aback flash in Erwin’s expression, as if he were surprised Levi was finally flirting back. If it was flirting that is. Levi still isn’t quite sure. 

Erwin takes another sip of his coffee. 

“Maybe I am too.”

Crumbs fall onto Levi’s lap as he clumsily places the paper back on the table, nudging the tray almost over the precipice. 

“Utrecht? That’s in Holland, right?”

Erwin pulls at his paisley tie. He grimaces slightly, as if caught out.

“Indeed.” 

Levi wonders how he’d paint his eyelashes, their thin strokes so dark compared to the bright blond of his hair.

“It’s where I met my ex-wife.”

_Great. Maybe not flirting then._

Levi pins him with a stare, across the short distance between them that feels as if it were shrinking.

“I saw you in the paper. Didn’t know you were caught up in so much scandal.” Levi smiles, watching the warm flush of Erwin’s face in response.

“Would you not have come to dinner if you knew?” Erwin teases back, grinning at him too. 

“Who knows? Maybe I’d have been even keener.” Levi doesn’t know how they’ve gone from him nearly having a panic attack in the middle of the street, to chatting each other up across a coffee table, but he’s damned if he’ll complain. 

A group of rowdy teenagers stroll past the café, yelling loudly, but the noise somehow doesn’t penetrate the small sphere of comfort they’ve somehow cultivated over the last five minutes.

“I’ll make sure to get divorced more often then.”

Levi giggles at that, an embarrassingly girly noise that has him glancing about him to see if anyone noticed.

“Are you really alright though Levi?”

Levi lets out a sigh, thumbing the cuff of his sleeve pondering how much of his situation to unveil. 

“My uncle’s a junkie. My most recent employer is a racist… And Hange got assaulted.”

_Apparently, all of it._

A pregnant pause. The dim light of the café makes Erwin seem a little older, the pastures of his skin more weathered and worn.

“Shit. Is she okay?”

_Maybe? Probably not?_

“She’s dealing with it. She’s a tough girl.”

Erwin wipes his lips with a paper napkin.

“I agree. Are _you_ okay?” Both their drinks appear to be finished.

“I’m not the one that got beaten up.” A Joy Division song is rattling through the café’s radio – far more interesting of a music choice than he’d expect from somewhere like this.

“I don’t think being beaten up is a requirement for not being okay, Levi.”

Levi likes the way his name falls off of Erwin’s tongue, the two syllables floating into the air in a warm murmur. _Le- vi-_ like wood rubbed smooth with sandpaper and oiled to a sharp shine. Like slipping into a swimming pool, cradled by the gentle caress of water. His mother had named him after a Catholic boy who she had known in her youth; the few guests at his _aqiqah_ had been a bit awkward about this apparently. He had sensed something of a whirlwind romance by the nostalgic pangs of her voice, but she hadn’t lived long enough to explain it. Although in truth, Levi spent most of his childhood being called _habibi._ He was very rarely _Levi_ unless he misbehaved. Up until her death that was. 

The rest of their conversation is a little more light-hearted. Levi rants about Mrs Miller, and how he broke his easel pulling it into the subway car, because nobody offered to help him, and he was dragging it one handed. Erwin discusses his upcoming collection, gesturing wildly with a passion that makes Levi smile – a smile that is for once truly genuine. 

As they stand to part ways, Erwin brushes Levi’s shoulders just as he had at the wall. 

“Can I have your number Levi?”

“What?” Levi had been distracted by the skim of his hands against him.

“Well, we need to organise me seeing these paintings, don’t we?”

\---------------------

A few days short of Levi’s 20th birthday, his mother had passed away. A combination of asthma, poor health, and a particularly difficult few months of getting food on the table had been the perfect combination for pneumonia, and she had been swept away by death one Tuesday night whilst Levi slept in the room next-door unaware, sure that if he and the old-man could somehow find enough money, they’d be able to afford a doctor who could put things right.

Levi was sure she must have known she was dying; he wondered whether she had whispered the _shahada_ to herself, keeping quiet so as not to wake them both – even in the throes of dying desperate not to be an inconvenience. It seemed bitterly ironic – cruel even – that Levi: a chronic insomniac, had slept peacefully that night, untouched by dreams, only to awake to a nightmare. 

He had found the body, of course. And though he wasn’t aware he’d screamed, or had even heard it, that must have been what awoke the old-man, who placed a sturdy hand on his shoulder; the two of them hovered over her body in silence, as if she was merely asleep and they were both being careful not to wake her.

Their neighbour had been sent to ask the greengrocer a few streets away to ask if they could use his van (typically packed full of fruit and vegetables) to transport Levi’s mother to the mosque – every other car in the neighbourhood being too small to fit her rigid body inside without doing some kind of morbid damage.

And so, Levi and the old-man stood facing north, chanting _duas_ with tear-slicked eyes trained at the ground.

Her dark black locks had been knotted into a braid, and Levi noted that despite him washing her face for her the night prior, she was wearing the lipstick she often favoured – although how she managed to apply it in her feeble state, he could not fathom. Her abaya and headscarf were at the foot of her bed, folded into a neat square, a thin gold chain atop them spiralled into a coil. Levi snatched it away into his pocket, terrified that the old-man might try to sell it for the meagre amount it may have been worth.

With all her relatives either dead, estranged, or in the case of Levi: male, the task of washing her body went to three elderly women Levi had never met before, let alone could say he knew, whilst he and the old-man sat in an office with the Imam, sipping tea that had gone cold in their mourning stillness.

Who would be running their hands over her body, washing her clean? Levi thought she had dealt with enough touching in her short, stunted lifetime, and it would be kinder to simply dunk her into a huge body of water. _Maybe a lake, or a river._

Three weeks after her death, Levi prayed for what would be the last time until he was twenty-five. _Salat al-zuhr_ – a weirdly middlish place to end, like deciding to go on a diet half-way through lunch. It seemed a particularly mundane way to be leaving the religion he had known since birth, but Levi simply rose half-way through the third _Rakat,_ and sprinted out of the mosque without even bothering to pick up his shoes. 

One month later, civil war had broken out. 

\---------------------

“Did you really mean it?”

“Mean what?”

Erwin’s voice sounds crackly through the phone, like a singer in an old-time jazz record.

“You want to see my paintings, yes?”

There is a pause, and a shuffling that sounds like something being moved. Maybe one of Erwin’s thousands of books, or a discarded mug of coffee cluttering the desk he’s inevitably sat at. 

“I write poetry for a living Levi, I rarely say things I don’t mean.”

“ _Tsk._ Stop being- I’ve forgotten the word.”

“Ostentatious? Flamboyant? Grandiose?”

“An asshole is what I meant. Stop showing off,” Levi thinks Erwin can probably hear him smiling down the speaker. 

“You wound me Levi.” _He’s giggling._ “I’m reading synonyms from a thesaurus.”

“Right. Yes or no though?”

_Another shuffle._

“Yes, I meant it. When are you free?”

“Come tomorrow.” _Levi questions how far he can push his luck._ “Bring a nice wine since you can afford it.” 

“Red or white?” 

It’s bewildering how Erwin seems to have no limit for him. No sense of outrage at his speech, or quirks or mannerisms. Levi doesn’t know how far he can push before the invisible, nebulous thing between them shatters, and Erwin tells him in no uncertain terms to _fuck off._

“You choose.”

“You trust my taste? Foolish mistake.” Levi can hear his chuckle. He feels like a teenage girl on the phone to her high school crush. Next thing they know, he’ll be asking him what he’s wearing. 

“I’ll ask Mike what he recommends – he’s about as pretentious as you seem to think _I_ am.”

Levi twists the coil of the telephone wire, biting away at a small strip of skin by his thumbnail. Hange has left her bedroom in a mess of pyjamas and knotted hair and is simultaneously making toast and trying to hear as much of the conversation as she possibly can.

“Stop wearing tweed then _abhaa._ It’ll sort that issue right out.”

“I trust that whatever that meant, it was a compliment?”

“Of course. It means unbelievably charitable. Suits you perfectly.”

“You’ll be in real trouble when I pick up an Arabic phrasebook. No more calling me an idiot.” Erwin says, the rich rumble of his voice bringing a flush to his cheeks – a blushing that has Hange grinning and gesticulating wildly from over across the kitchen.

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Is seven ‘o’clock okay?” Levi asks.

“Perfect. I’ll see you then. With wine of course.”

“Expensive wine?”

_“The priciest bottle I can find.”_

Maybe it’s not been shattered, but Levi thinks there is definitely the beginnings of a crack.

\---------------------¬

Hange puts on her coat, her glasses slipping slightly down the slope of her nose.

“I’ll be making myself scarce then.” She says smugly, a pleased smirk on her face.

Levi straightens out the rug on the ground – a ratty thing that probably had fleas in it at one point, and a hideous, gaudy floral print to match, and then crosses his arms pointedly.

“He’s looking at paintings Hange, not bending me over the kitchen counter.”

_The idea is certainly nice though._

“I suppose that’s why you’ve dolled yourself up then?”

_Fucking Hange and her observance._

“It’s a sweater and some cologne, not a tuxedo Hange.” Levi mutters, but internally he can admit he put more effort in than usual.

Hange grabs her handbag and tussles a few fingers through her hair in front of the small mirror on the wall. Her keys jangle loudly as she tucks them into her pocket, ready to leave.

“Mae alsa-lama!” Her pronunciation is shaky, but there’s notable improvement.

“We pronounce it a bit different in Lebanon. If you really want to learn, get the Lebanese dialect textbooks, not the typical Arabic ones.” Levi remarks. 

“

Why would I buy books when you’re so keen to teach me free of charge?” She teases, smiling as she walks out the door, her footsteps echoing down the steps for a good few seconds. 

With Hange gone, Levi feels the nervousness much more keenly. He has maybe fifteen canvases laid out in a border against the walls of the living room. There’re maybe five paintings of her, including one nude that she insisted he’d be too embarrassed to paint, and that he had done so just to spite her. After that, a few of Petra and Eld, a blurry charcoal rendering of Mrs Knight downstairs done mostly from memory, and a painting of his mother done similarly – captured in brushstrokes done from fleeting images he couldn’t remember with any clarity: the passage of time blurring her into a smudged, glowing figure of a woman. The largest canvas is a copy of a photograph of him and Hange, taken on the subway with a polaroid camera during her briefly lived photography phase, painted in layers so thick the paint prickles out like millions of tiny vertical mountains. His favourite is a watercolour – he so rarely used the medium – of Hange and Moblit sleeping on the couch together, wrapped so tightly in each other’s arms it was hard to distinguish whose limbs were whose.

Levi has spent two years showing paintings to gallery owners and buyers and has never felt so anxious as this. But he has little time to dwell on it, because Erwin’s arrival is swiftly announced by a sharp rap at the door.

He opens the door to the smiling man carrying a bottle of wine and a worn backpack – the straps frayed and threadbare, so juxtaposed by his usually well-kempt appearance. He hands Levi a deep green bottle of Merlot, and a short strip of paper.

“A receipt for $88.76.” Erwin says, raising his eyebrows as he smiles.

_Levi chokes on his spit._

“You’re joking.” He stares at the bottle in his hands. “ _I_ was only joking. Why the fuck would you spend that on wine?”

“It was a gift from Nan’ actually, although it was probably still expensive. The receipt is from the drycleaners.” He steps through the entrance of the door, and Levi takes his coat, mouth a little agape. He looks down at the thin receipt paper, and at the bold printed _‘Powell’s Dry Clean NY’._

“I’ll grab glasses, sit wherever you like.” Levi says, motioning to the couch and rickety chair, cringing in embarrassment.

Levi stands in the kitchen, wiping the sweat of his hands against his pants, attempting to match his breathing to the slow ticking of the clock mounted to the wall. Everything in their apartment suddenly stands out as either broken, cheap, or ugly. Their wine glasses are tacky, the carpet is inelegant and garish – the bright orange of the walls vulgar. _Levi looks down at his outfit and supposes he probably looks cheap to Erwin too._ Still, he returns to the living room with two wine glasses and a corkscrew.

Erwin is standing with his back turned to Levi, staring at the portrait of his mother.

“Levi… These – these are incredible. Really incredible.” Erwin says, his voice hushed to a whisper. They’re standing at opposite sides of the room, gaze fixed on one another.

“Thank you.” Levi mumbles, striding over to set the glasses upon the coffee table beside the wine bottle.

“No, I mean it Levi. These are phenomenal. Fuck - and you can’t get gallery space?” Erwin steps closer to Levi, his eyes alight with an intensity he’s never before seen conjured by his painting. 

A little taken aback, Levi shakes his head in response, pouring both of their glasses and wishing everyone shared Erwin’s passionate affection for his work, or at least the right people.

Erwin comes to sit at the couch, opposite Levi in the rickety, creaking chair. He points to the canvas of his mother, set a few feet away from the rest. 

“She looks a lot like you.” He notes, before taking a sip from his glass and glancing at Levi from over the rim, waiting for his explanation. 

“My mother.”

Erwin leans over slightly to look at the painting, the twist of his straining neck urging the bones and veins beneath the creamy planes of his skin to tautness. 

“What do the words mean?” He indicates to the inky black lines of Arabic script filling the background of the painting, surrounding his mother’s head like a halo.

“It’s the _shahada._ Statement of faith. It’s said a lot. We try to make it our last words when –” Levi sets his glass down. “When we’re dying.”

“Say it aloud for me?”

Levi laughs coldly.

“It’s meant to be said with sincerity,” he admits guiltily, hands shaking a little as he keeps his gaze poised to the painting.

Erwin shifts a little in his seat, before settling and leaning his elbow on the arm of the couch. The intensity in his eyes has dissipated slightly, but he still looks at Levi with an intentness that unnerves him.

“Say something else then.”

_You terrify me. You make me feel simultaneously ugly and beautiful. I want to put my bare hands on your skin without noticing the ways you and I are different. I want to touch you without feeling guilty. I want to love you without burning in hell for it._

“ _Tel-has tee-zee._ Kiss my ass.” 

Erwin sighs. “You speak so beautifully Levi. You truly have a way with words. Have you ever considered branching out into poetry?” he drawls sarcastically.

Levi stands gingerly, and Erwin follows suit. They walk past each of the paintings steadily, quiet but for the occasional compliment from Erwin, or explanation from Levi. They stand so close to each other Levi can hear the soft rattle of Erwin’s breath mingling with his own, _can smell the soft echoes of the soap he must have used, and the faint murmuring of cigarette smoke beneath it._

Erwin smiles fondly at the watercolour of Hange and Moblit. He beams at a portrait of Petra, halfway through getting ready one night with Hange, a semi-circle of half-applied red lipstick ghosting her mouth. He pauses at the largest canvas – the painting Levi had done of himself and Hange.

“Levi?”

Levi is snatched away from his revery – from trailing his eyes down Erwin’s back, and the white cotton that enshrouds it. 

“Let me buy this?” He’s knelt down before the painting as if in prayer.

“What?” Levi’s brows are knit in confusion.

“Let me buy this? I’ll pay whatever you want.” 

“You can have it for free, Erwin – why would you want to buy it?” Levi asks in a bewilderment almost accusatory, convinced Erwin would stand, laugh, and tell him he was merely teasing, _because who would ever like his paintings enough to buy them?_

“It’s beautiful. How much do you want for it?” Erwin asks, rising to his feet.

“Feel free to just take it, I only did it for practice. It’s hardly worth anything.” Levi sits down on the couch, refilling both of their glasses where they were perched on the table – a little precariously. He thinks back to the night they had met, and the champagne glasses that had littered the table like constellations of stars on a night sky.

“Why do you say that? How do you not see what I see?”

Levi is unsure if he’ll ever be acclimatised to Erwin’s affinity for sudden outbursts of brunt straight-forwardness. Downing the remains of his glass in one, he cocks his head at Erwin; the severity of his own stare matching his.

“What _do_ you see?” Levi retorts back.

Erwin sits beside him on the couch, maybe a foot or two away from him. There is a pregnant pause, and the soft sound of Erwin swallowing.

“I see – I see sanctity.” 

_What the fuck is he meant to say to that?_ And he doesn’t know. So, he turns back to the comfort of easy teasing – the ever-dependable humour that has kept him safe for a very long time.

“Bold of you to say to me, catholic boy.” He laughs, although his voice has dimmed to an uncertain murmur.

“There’s worse things I could do.” He mutters back, and he sounds just as uncertain as Levi does. Because isn’t it true? The two of them are just bursting at the seams with ways to go wrong – their association concocting a myriad of disasters just waiting for one of them to make the first move. And somehow, despite his usual resilience and reckless audacity, he doesn’t think it’ll be him. 

_Pomegranates in the late autumn, their juice dripping down his chin like blood. Loquats in spring. Swollen figs in the summer, eaten before spoiled by the hot drench of rain._

_What is love if it is not bloodstained, and riddled with guilt?_

Erwin is leaning closer into him.

“What are you doing?” Levi blurts out, looking up at Erwin and the rapidly decreasing space between them both.

“Well,” Erwin lets out a little huff of breath, and places a firm hand against the left side of Levi’s neck cautiously, as if giving him an opportunity to stop the motion.

“I was hoping to kiss you. Although if you’re not too keen on the idea, by all means, please tell me.” The vehement look in his eyes has quelled, leaving something very closely akin to fearfulness in its wake. 

“You can – Yes, if you – if you want.” And just because he wants to be extra clear, he nods gently. 

The kiss is almost timid – over so quickly, Levi questions if he imagined it. Levi presses back for a second, their noses nudging awkwardly.

“Take the painting.” Levi says, staring down at where his hand has nestled to cradle Erwin’s waist.

“Hange’s going to be back soon.” Levi whispers into the meagre space between them. He worries Erwin will assume he’s trying to get rid of him, so he places a third kiss to his right cheekbone, the hand that he’d put at his waist raising to trace the soft curve of his jaw.

Erwin nods solemnly in reply, rises to stand, and then hoists the painting into his arms.

He slips into his coat, the painting tucked beneath his left arm, lips stained slightly by the wine they’d been drinking and cheeks flushed.

“Goodbye.” Erwin speaks softly, towering over Levi, chest rising just enough faster than it should be for Levi to notice his accelerated breaths. He bends down, their foreheads leant against each other, but their lips don’t meet. Levi reaches up on his toes to brush their noses faintly. Instead, Erwin uses his spare hand to grab Levi’s own, planting a warm kiss to his clasped fist, before pivoting and walking out of the door.

_Cracks beginning to form_

\---------------------

The next morning, Levi finds $400 in his coat pocket, alongside a drycleaners receipt with a smiley-face scribbled on it in blue ink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: racism, mention of drug use, transphobic violence, mention of death (not any of the main characters)
> 
>  _kol khara_ \- eat shit  
>  _ibn el sharmouta_ \- son of a bitch/whore  
>  _aqiqah_ \- the traditional sacrifice of an animal in celebration of the birth of a child, the babies hair is shaven and the weight of the hair in gold is donated to charity  
>  _habibi_ \- term of endearment, my dear or beloved  
>  _shahada_ \- muslim declaration of faith (and the first pillar of islam)  
>  _dua_ \- prayer specifically addressed to Allah in supplication, often done after the death of a loved one  
>  _salat al-zuhr_ \- midday prayer  
>  _rakat_ \- the series of movements performed during prayer  
>  _abhaa_ \- pompous  
>  _mae alsalama_ \- goodbye  
>  _tel-has tee-zee_ \- kiss my ass 
> 
> hello! another chapter done, although im uploading this with a raging migraine so there is inevitably many typos i'll have to go back and edit aha. comments, kudos and feedback are super appreciated!! hope you all enjoy, and that you're all staying safe and well!
> 
> jo x


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for very brief mentioning of abuse, and the AIDS epidemic. i want to preface this now by letting you all know none of the main characters are going to be affected by HIV personally. if this may be a triggering topic for you though, i would recommend not reading, as it is going to be a present issue throughout the wider story considering the time period this fic is set. any questions about this, feel free to drop me a comment x

By the age of ten, Levi though with a relative degree of confidence that he was probably gay, and by thirteen he had known so. By fifteen, he had known what being gay meant to the rest of the world, and somehow that had solidified his self-awareness even further.

And yet, for all his conviction, if you asked Levi what it meant to feel love, he wouldn’t be able to answer – only knowing what it is to long for love and not receive it. Still, he could guess. And he’d guess that love would feel warm, but the draining warmth of a greying evening, rather than the suffocation of a summer’s day. It would feel warm like being held, both too tightly and not tightly enough. It would be warm the way colours are: superficially. And it would likely not last for long. But Levi was assured of this – all he would know of love would be guesses. 

Although every so often he comes across something that feels like an educated guess – an assumption based upon tentative moments like now: the brass curve of Erwin’s wire frame glasses on the slope of his nose, the bitten down fingernails of his hands as he makes tea in Levi’s kitchen or the tell-tale trickle of heavy footsteps outside his door. By the sixth week of their awareness of one another, Levi finds himself spending more time at Erwin’s apartment than is probably appropriate in light of their short association. 

Levi is standing at one of Erwin’s many bookshelves – the darker, taller one that he expects was more expensive than the white painted trio that line the back wall of his living room. The books here are more weathered than elsewhere, leatherbound blocks in shades of burgundy and wine, their titles embossed in flaking gold foil. 

“Read this for me?”

Erwin hands Levi an open book, his thumb keeping the pages spread with a firm press. 

Levi glances at the pages, at the Arabic script and the adjacent translation beside it. 

“I’m not your personal interpreter you know. If it’s got the translation, why am I reading it?” Levi asks sharply but sits down on Erwin’s coach to read aloud, nonetheless. 

“It’s not the same in English. I want the real thing – not just a translation.” 

Erwin has put a pot of brewing earl grey onto the coffee table – the two mismatched mugs they always seem to use ready with a teaspoon of sugar in Erwin’s. He sits at the far end of the couch, stretching his legs out to plant his socked feet in Levi’s lap – an action Levi pretends to be annoyed by but secretly finds his heart fluttering at. 

_"'Are all my wishes made of dust,_

_While yours fashioned of pure gold?_

_Or are all my wishes doomed to vanish_

_While yours are destined for immortality'”_

Not a word is said after that. They sip their tea in embarrassed silence. 

\-------------

Erwin’s collection gets published a few weeks later. Levi receives a copy in the post, heavy in his hands, the brown paper of the parcel slightly stained with dirt and torn at a corner. Levi paints and paints for three days straight, refusing to open the pages yet. When he finally does, he blemishes the crisp pages with the smears of paint lingering on his fingertips. On the first page, he sees the slanted _‘To M, in contrition.’_ and has half a mind to scribble it out. He paints for a further three days and leaves the book on his bedside table. 

\-------------

Hange comes home Tuesday crying with the news that Oluo who worked in the studio beside her had died. Nobody was quite sure why, and his parents, whom Hange had tracked down in a phonebook, refused to answer any calls. The unfinished paintings remaining in his studio get thrown out by the landlord, and Levi and Hange stand on the edge of the sidewalk, watching the stretched fabric of each canvas tear abruptly as they’re crumpled into trashcans, like skin punctured by a knife. Cleaners come by the next day and scrub the walls and the floorboards so thoroughly even Levi is confused by its meticulousness. There is no funeral, and all trace that Oluo ever even existed seems gone within weeks. 

\-------------

“According to this magazine - ” Erwin begins. Levi is sat on his plush rug, lazily sketching strangers in the pictures that hang on Erwin’s wall. 

“I am the New York poetry scene’s ‘most eligible bachelor’,” he laughs out, disregarding the rest of the review and throwing the magazine onto his coffee table with an air of distaste. 

“You’ve barely been divorced six months. Hardly eligible.” Levi remarks, looking up from his sketch to a disgruntled looking Erwin, shuffling through a foot-tall pile of newspapers, their reviews about him already highlighted by his agent in neon yellow. The statement makes his stomach twist, as if _‘The Brooklyn Literary Post’_ had somehow invaded the fragile thing between them, and torn Erwin out of his frail grasp. 

Erwin plonks down to the left of him on the rug, leaning his back against the front of the couch and tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling with a disappointed sigh. Levi closes his sketchbook, puts it on the table alongside the aforementioned magazine that seems to have put them both in a bad mood, and slides his left hand upturned besides Erwin, watching as he takes slow movements to lock their fingers together, as if he’d never touched another person before and didn’t know how, let alone the hands of another man. Both of their hands are sweaty, and it’s hardly romantic, but they both seem to need the comfort. 

“Did she know?” Levi asks, and it must take a few seconds before Erwin even realises who or what Levi is referring to. He huffs a little and looks at the picture on the wall Levi is staring at, _gold frame, brown hair, white dress, confetti._ Why Erwin has kept it up on the wall after she left him, Levi can’t understand. 

“She did by the end of it.” Erwin mutters, running a hesitant thumb against the ridges of Levi’s knuckles. 

“Had you even – had you ever been with another man?” Levi watches the slow caress of his thumb and wonders if Erwin ever did this to Marie. 

Levi gets a dry chuckle in response, although the creases of Erwin’s mouth are even more downturned than before. 

“She’s the only person I’ve ever even slept with Levi.” 

He’s not sure how to respond to that, but Levi feels the falter in Erwin’s movements, the more pronounced unease of his breathing. _Did you love her? Did you really love her? Did it feel like love when you fucked her?_ Levi wants to ask, but instead remains silent. 

“I told her. I told her myself.” Erwin admits in a hushed whisper, and Levi shuffles closer to his side until his own head rests against his shoulder. It’s a little awkward, a contortion of slotted limbs and jutting bones, but they need the closeness even more so now. 

“It just got to a point –” he starts, and Levi runs his fingertips over Erwin’s collarbone peeking out of the loose collar of his shirt, watching the eruption of goosebumps that follow his movements. 

“It got to a certain point, and I just couldn’t do it anymore. She – she wanted a baby, and I couldn’t.” Erwin stops, and Levi guesses if he looked up now towards his face, there’d probably be a damp wateriness in his eyes. Levi imagines Erwin as he is now, but his apartment filled with toys rather than books, his office turned into a nursery – Marie sat beside him, the curve of her pregnant torso pronounced beneath a flowery dress. Gold wedding bands still on their fingers. Levi has very rarely considered parenthood, but the sudden realisation he could never give Erwin anything even closely resembling life hits him rather harshly. No marriage, no babies, no white picket fence. 

The vulnerability doesn’t last long. 

“Still,” Erwin straightens slightly, wiping away an escaped tear from his cheek. 

“I’m the New York literary scene’s ‘most eligible bachelor.’” Erwin laughs, and Levi wants to grab the muscles of his shoulders and tell him to just keep crying, to finally stop lying to himself and holding it in. _To just be what Marie had accused him of being, with Levi cradled in his arms, and no more guilt._

Instead, Erwin stands and leaves for the bathroom. 

\-------------

Levi taps the phone number with a fraudulent air of nonchalance, heart thrumming. Erwin picks up by the third ring. 

“Hello?” 

“We’re going out. Hange says you’re coming with us.” Claiming it was her who suggested the idea is a lot easier than asking Erwin himself to come with him to a gay club. 

“She did, did she?” Erwin asks, and Levi can hear the smug smirk through the telephone speaker – knows Erwin has caught him out already. 

“There’s a few of us going. Be at mine at ten – it’s a few blocks away.” Levi mumbles, his voice rushing over the vowels in a feeble attempt to make this less embarrassing. 

“You’re being very bossy for someone asking me on a date.” 

“It’s not a date.” Levi spits hurriedly before they make their goodbyes, but he can feel the heat erupting in his cheek bones, knows Hange is probably grinning on the other side of the room. Erwin shows up on time, because _of course he does,_ dressed in what is probably his best attempt at casual, and although Levi knows he’ll stick out like a sore thumb, the very evidence he at least tried is endearing. 

Hange makes them half an hour late as always, spending far too long on her makeup and then insisting on doing Petra’s as well, because Petra was Petra, who (shaped by her Southern up bringing) was still too scared to wear anything that didn’t adhere to her father’s concept of modesty. Moblit is dressed in drag, and as he walks out of Hange’s bedroom in a blindingly pink dress made of ruffling waves of taffeta, Levi looks at Erwin’s face expecting surprise or shock, and is proud to see nothing but a warm smile. Hange smears a little black eyeshadow across Levi’s eyes with the insistence he _‘looks like that singer from the Cure’_ that he finds himself almost offended by, and as she does so somehow gets a smear of purple lipstick on his shirt. He half expects her to give convincing Erwin into a makeover a go, but she looks at the clock and finally puts her shoes on to go. Levi has the brief worry people might see Erwin in the club in his virginal white shirt and assume he’s an undercover cop trying to bust the whole lot of them. 

_The dark anonymity of a New York street is one of Levi’s favourite things in the world._

The five of them slip down the sidewalk mostly hidden from prying eyes. And if passer-by’s are startled by their appearances, the double takes go unnoticed. Taken by a sudden bout of courage, Levi grabs Erwin’s hand before he has time to rethink the idea, and together their mismatched selves walk quickly the ten-minute trek to the club, enshrouded by the safety of other club-goers and tourists and the kaleidoscope of people New York has to offer, the thick swell of cigarettes and alcohol in the air. Levi listens to Hange’s shrieking, and Petra’s subsequent giggling, and thinks he has done nothing on this earth to deserve a moment as happy as this. 

_Love is knowing the world doesn’t want you to have something and taking it anyways._

Eld is already there sat at a table when they arrive, six small shot glasses already arranged in a circle for them as they bustle through the thick crowd on the dancefloor to the other side of the room. If Erwin is nervous to be here, he doesn’t let it show, and Levi thinks that the flickering purple lights of the club make him even more beautiful than he had looked under the streetlights. He commits the image to memory with half the idea to paint him as soon as he gets home, but Eld is dragging him into a hug that he begrudgingly accepts, before he can consider how he’d size the canvas. 

The pounding music is too loud to actually hear what is being said to him, but Eld is pulled away by Petra to the dancefloor before he is expected to give a response. Levi downs a shot in a quick swallow – _vodka,_ he grimaces, wishing Eld had chosen tequila because Petra couldn’t handle vodka to save her life, and Levi didn’t enjoy nursing a drunken Petra on the best of nights, let alone a night when he had specific company he hoped to impress. Levi hands a glass to Erwin, grinning at the look of doubt before he drinks it too. 

“Rite of passage.” Levi yells over the noise, sliding into a seat beside Erwin to sit down. He supresses a smile at the little cough Erwin lets out. 

“Not used to your liquor?” Levi teases, watching the green and pink strobes of light against Erwin’s hair, against the shadows of his cheekbones. Erwin pinches his side in response. 

“Alcohol is more forbidden for you than it is for me.” He points out, quirking an eyebrow at Levi with a knowing smirk. Levi tuts. 

“We’re in a gay club Erwin, we can debate what is and isn’t haram tomorrow.” Levi chuckles dryly, the sudden image of his mother’s horrified face plaguing his mind. _He imagines bitterly that she’d probably be more annoyed by the alcohol than the homosexuality._

A Cheryl Lynn song Levi doesn’t recognise starts blaring but based on the look Hange suddenly gives him from the other side of the room, this is definitely one of those _‘Levi you have to dance, get up asshole!’_ songs. He can almost hear her screeching for him to join them over the music. 

Levi rises. 

“Come on, duty calls.” He reaches out to Erwin with both hands, pulling him up. 

“Oh God no, I’m not dancing.” 

Even in the relative darkness, Levi can see Erwin blushing. And still, Erwin follows Levi as he leads them towards Hange and the others, his sweaty palms clinging to Levi’s like he might float away. 

_Love is knowing you don’t deserve something and taking it anyways._

There are far too many people swarmed around the two of them, maybe a hundred hot, sweaty, glittering bodies all swaying and jumping at once, so Levi places Erwin’s hands at his waist and pulls them as closely together as they can be before it crosses any boundaries, wrapping his hands around Erwin’s neck and interlocking his fingers. 

“I have no idea what I’m doing.” Erwin mumbles, and Levi has to strain to make out what he’s saying, realising he’s going to have to take the lead despite his own considerable inexperience in this area. 

“Just – just move?” Levi shouts, stepping forward into Erwin to get him to step back also, pulling the two of them into an inelegant spiral pattern, the two of them messy with their feet and bumping into others far to often. 

“Look – just – close your eyes, okay? Don’t think about it.” Levi has to lean into Erwin’s ear to give the directions, but Erwin does as he’s told. They’re standing closer to one another now, hips pressed together with a cautious gentility, and Levi’s mouth has gone very dry. He starts first with a sway of their hips to the beat of the song, the embarrassed smile on Erwin’s face making him braver. Levi reaches up and runs a hand through Erwin’s hair, now a little dampened by sweat under the sweltering heat of the lights. Erwin’s head is now tucked into Levi’s shoulder, the height difference making it a little uncomfortable, but the press of Erwin’s temple against the side of his own head, and brush of his warm breath against his neck is enough to make the awkwardness worthwhile. 

Eld makes his way towards them, dancing rather furiously with a flushed Petra, whose tights are already laddered. He gives Levi a little wink before turning towards Erwin. 

“You better impress him, baby gay, see those three over there?” 

He points at a few men Levi has never met before, sat at the bar drinking alarmingly coloured cocktails, and looking quite frankly miserable. 

“They’ve been begging for Levi’s number for weeks.” Eld winks at Levi again, and leads Petra away with a twirl. 

This seems to spur Erwin on a little. 

And though nothing can be said for their talent – they’re definitely dancing, at least by a loose definition. Levi shakes his head to get his hair out of his eyes, and Erwin presses a chaste kiss into his neck before looking away bashfully. 

_And Erwin looks so stunning that for a short while, it is so easy to forget the churning of guilt in his stomach that never seems to fade away. And Erwin looks so stunning, so gut wrenchingly, vulnerably happy that Levi knows he’d do anything, give anything away, to keep this. Even if he doesn’t deserve it._

They’re pressed together in a rhythmic grind for a few more minutes, their self-conscious giggling muted by the pounding speakers – an affordance Levi is grateful for. Erwin has snaked one hand up to Levi’s waist, whilst the other clings a little lower on his hips than it had done earlier, his thumb only just brushing against the inch of skin left exposed beneath the shortened hem of his t-shirt. 

Moments later, the song draws to a finish, and Levi clamours them back to the table to take a desperate sip from the round of beers Moblit has brought over, half of his own bottle gone within seconds. Hange is draped over Moblit’s lap, eyes wide as Eld whispers something into her ear – probably his meddling with him and Erwin just earlier. 

“I’m gonna head to the restroom.” Levi says, giving Erwin’s hand a squeeze, and a kiss to his fingers – a gesture that’s become rather frequent between the two of them. The shimmery green Levi had painted his own nails stands out against the pale skin of Erwin’s palms. The two of them are so different, _too different maybe,_ born thousands of miles away from one another, and yet – somehow - they’ve ended up clambering down the same weathered path together. 

_Who the fuck knows where that path ends?_

Petra appears behind him as he’s walking back from the toilets. The happy glow that had been on her rosy cheeks has now disappeared. 

“Levi… Can I talk to you?” 

_Fucking hell._

“Yeah, of course.” Levi mutters, pulling the two of them back into the hallway that leads to the single, beaten up, piss-stinking toilet so they can talk a little easier without the violent thrum of music. 

“It’s just, I wasn’t sure the others would be…” She glances to the ground for a second, considering her choice of words. 

“Objective?” 

Levi nods at her to continue. 

“Have you heard the rumours? About the – _well it’s a horrible thing to say really –_ ‘Gay Disease?’” 

Levi laughs at her. 

“It’s just… We’ve had five patients in the hospital over the last few weeks just – just die? And it’s not normal, they’re healthy young men, and then all of a sudden, they’re on my ward with pneumonia? And I wouldn’t think anything of it, but I spoke to them all, and they were all gay Levi!” Her usually warm voice has sharpened into a panicked whisper. 

“What a load of bullshit. How can a disease tell you’re gay? It checks your record collection to see if you’ve got any Barbara Streisand?” 

Petra does not seem to find the joke funny. 

“Come on.” Levi pulls her into a hug. Poor Petra. Poor Petra who worried about everything – _bless her heart¬._ Poor Petra that had run away from conversion therapy to New York of all places and couldn’t wear a dress shorter than her knees without worrying she’d get beaten for it. Petra, who can’t wear lipstick too dark, or go too long without trimming her hair. Petra, who had arrived bruised and bloody and broken just like the rest of them, and _just like the rest of them_ was still not quite put back together. 

_Poor Petra who had known before any of the rest of the world could even guess._

\-------------

“You’re drunk,” Erwin giggles into Levi’s hair, like a stoned teenager amused by his own stupid joke, or the stumbling of his words. 

“ _You’re_ drunk.” Levi retorts, cackling a little and pulling the ratty, so-called ‘couch-blanket’ over their curled-up bodies. The two of them let out a simultaneous groan at the sounds of Petra’s vomiting from the bathroom, and Eld’s subsequent soothing _(irritating)_ cooing. 

Levi’s had to surrender his bed to a passed-out Petra, hence why the two of them are nestled into the shitty couch that is so small Erwin’s feet peak out over the precipice. Eld, for whatever bizarre reason his brain had concocted, had taken a blanket from Hange’s closet, and curled up to sleep in their bathtub. 

“Can’t believe New York’s hottest bachelor is sleeping on my couch,” Levi slurs, the nausea settling in his stomach warning him he’ll likely be so astronomically hung-over tomorrow he’ll regret drinking as much as he did. But for now, _the two of them are safe. And the room is warm – superficially – like colours._

“Yeah well,” Erwin shifts, and repositions his arm to cradle along the curve of Levi’s shoulder. “If my back hurts in the morning I’m blaming you.” _For a fleeting, ephemeral moment, Levi forgets who’s meant to be protecting who._

Levi presses a messy kiss onto the space beneath Erwin’s right eyebrow, but in his tipsiness, lands a little off aim onto the bridge of his nose, sending them into another burst of cackling, the slope of his nose now flushed a little red in his eagerness. 

“Levi?” 

Levi hums in reply, willing himself to turn his head, but finding he can’t really be bothered to move all that much. 

“Really like you Levi. Really really…” His speech trails off. _So much for being an eloquent, award-winning wordsmith._

Erwin has stumbled into fitful, blissful snoring before Levi can stammer up a witty reply. 

He mumbles something in Arabic he forgets the moment it leaves his mouth and waits for sleep to take him also. 

\-------------

Although in school Levi could rarely sit still for longer than ten minutes at a stretch, the old-man in Beirut’s stories had been one of the rare pleasures in his childhood – so long as they weren’t too closely related with anything religious, since once he arrived at the age of thirteen, Levi – in his hormonal, adolescent rebellion – had decided he would become an atheist. In truth, the phase didn’t last more than three days, because his neighbour told him he’d go to hell for that, and Levi figured he couldn’t afford to add anymore to his list of sins. Still, he’d dawdle a little during the call to prayer, and bicker with his friends at the back of the class during Quran lessons, even if he had decided he’d stick with Islam for a little longer. One-time, Levi had even run all the way to the Catholic church on the other side of the town, thrown a twig at a grey, crackled statue of Jesus, and then ran all the way back again, just because a classmate had dared him to. 

Levi’s favourite story for the old-man to tell had been _‘Layla and Majnun’_ , because he so rarely mentioned anything pertaining to romance. Manjun, who had gone so crazy with his love for Layla he haunted the desert chanting poetry, so incessant in his love that he refused to ever touch her. _Because to touch is to ruin._ Instead, Layla remained the chaste, perfect virgin she was, and Manjun’s love for her remained perfect. 

And although he had enjoyed the tale at the time, Levi looks back now and thinks the story is _completely, ridiculously depressing_. Why waste an opportunity for love trying to be perfect – trying to be clean? _What a fucking waste._ Better to go to hell for fucking than to never have fucked at all, Levi thinks. And then he remembers that shitty Shakespeare quote that sounds similar, albeit less vulgar, and knows Erwin is leaving too much of an impression on him. 

Like raindrops on the thick, glistening green of a wine-bottle, fracturing the light. Like the flushed, naïve buds of newly born flowers stretching out of the earth like a young bird might hatch from its nest, poking its head out to test the safety of its new environment. Like the press of kohl against his eyes at Eid, like the gentle promise of food at Iftar, his mother and the old-man sat either side of him before the bombs began to fall, and there were no more stories to be told. 

_Love is taking and taking with greedy hands and knowing that what you hold wants to be there just as ravenously as you do._

\-------------

Levi tucks a note into Erwin’s pocket before he leaves the next morning, hung-over, with purple dappled beneath his glassy blue eyes, and his shirt creased like a crumpled piece of notepaper. 

Whilst Erwin bids goodbye to the others, who are in various states of consciousness, and still wearing last nights clothes, Levi scrawls with shaky hands. 

_‘I like you too dumbass’,_ in Arabic of course, because he’s not going to make it easy for Erwin. If he wants Levi to admit his feelings, he can put in the effort of translating, draw out the tension a little bit. He draws a tiny, lopsided heart before thinking better of it and scribbling it out embarrassedly, slipping it into the breast-pocket of Erwin’s coat where he knows he keeps his keys. 

As ever, Erwin presses a chaste kiss to Levi’s fingertips, and then he’s out of Levi’s doorway as if he’d never been there at all. Levi trips over Moblit’s discarded wig on the way back to the sofa, where he crashes with the desperate inelegance of one who has had far too heavy a night before. 

He dreams, and dreams of empty deserts. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiya! hope you enjoyed this, it was a joy to write the dancing! for anyone wondering, the song they danced to was cheryl lynn's 'got to be real' bc theyre falling in love and im a sap 
> 
> the extract from the poem was from a longer poem called 'the clay' by lebanese poet Elia Abu Madi, which I would absolutely recommend reading, its very beautiful.
> 
> please keep the comments and kudos coming, they make me so happy, and as sad as some moments can be, writing this has been an absolute joy so far. im being very swamped by uni work at the moment and just general stress so apologies that this was a little shorter than previous chapters have been! please let me know what you thought of this! i live for positive affirmation aha 
> 
> stay safe, jo x


End file.
